Eris inside Pandora's Box.
| “ | "How dare these mortals not show their love and affection for me?!" | ” |
—Eris
| ||
Pandora's Box was a mysterious artifact located in Pandora that housed unimaginable destructive power devastating enough to render entire lands uninhabitable.
On 5E:319, the box was used by Eris to punish her subjects by turning Pandora into a desolate wasteland.
Description[]
A Dragon Gate
Pandora's Box was a large structure with no discernible external features or entrances.
It was built using two unknown materials, a light gray brick placed as ceiling and flooring in a double basket weave pattern and a light gray brick bearing an etched frieze appearing to depict a Dragon Gate stacked upon each other to form walls.
The interior of the box was bare except for a outcropping in the center resembling a throne.
Though there was some form of lighting within the box, it was rather dim inside, with the corners bathed in shadow.
History[]
The Box Arrives[]
Platform where Pandora's Box appeared
On 5E:319, Pandora's Box appeared in the heights of Sanctuary, hidden on a wooden platform nestled upon the upper branches of the tree that contained the Elite Control Panel, enshrouded in darkness by the thick canopy of leaves provided by Cloud Cover.
This platform was supposedly going to be the location of the Summergate Museum, but this is now believed to have been misinformation spread by Eris to conceal its true purpose.
The origin of the box is unknown.
Agents Appear[]
Soon after the box's arrival, Agents of Eris were seen in Sanctuary. These sinister operatives were said to be serving the inexorable will of their goddess, but little was known about their nature or why they had emerged unnannounced. Some interpreted this as a lack of faith in her Priesthood or displeasure with her Archpriest HyperSilence.
Two agents staffed a kiosk above Sanctuary Cafe near the airship.
They acted as agent provocateurs, selling vast quantities of cheap explosives to anyone who approached. They encouraged these residents to revert to their baser instincts: to loot, pillage, rape, and murder to their heart's content, assuring them that there would be absolutely no consequences.
Opening the Box[]
The reason for the presence of her agents was revealed with horrifying clarity when Eris ordered them to open Pandora's Box.
Having recently returned only weeks earlier from an unexplained absence, the goddess of discord was disappointed with her subjects. Despite going to great lengths to inject new forms of excitement into their life through the Twilight Project, the ungrateful wretches had failed to lavish her with the adoration she'd expected. Her Shrine in Wyvern Pointe was rarely visited and their offerings were pitiful, amounting to little more than pork chops, soul sand, and Cranny Lightsabers.
Feeling spurned and unloved, Eris decided it was time to make her presence known to all of her mortal vassals in a trial by fire and fury. Her agents loyally carried out her punishment and opened the box.
Destruction caused by the opening of Pandora's Box
The effects were immediate. All property claims protected by magical seals granted with the golden shovel collapsed, as did local suppression of fire and explosions. Within minutes, residents reported a shocking wave of disintegration descending upon Pandora radiating outward to cause fires, smash holes through solid stone walls, and annihilate nearly everything in its path.
In its wake followed roving bands of brigands and scavengers who preyed upon ruins that were now unprotected by the magic of Eris, free to steal and vandalize what little was left behind after the ravaging.
Because the phenomenon seemed to first orginate in populated areas, it is probable that the box's effects were propagated through the Dragon Gates themselves, at which point they slowly expanded outward. This would explain why reports named Sprankleton, Hunter's Home, Freetown, Kindred, Norwich, and Darklight as the first to be destroyed but took far longer for locations like Hyperion II, Jinxion, and Dapton to suffer damage—all places quite far from Dragon Gates. This theory is also supported by the fact that the box itself was built from bricks that bore an etched design uncannily similar a Dragon Gate.
Aftermath[]
Within days, all of Pandora was destroyed by whatever was unleashed from Pandora's Box.
Appropriately, the survivors sought refuge in Sanctuary, which was protected from the carnage by the power of Eris. Wyvern Pointe, created in a partnership between the demigod Archpriest HyperSilence, Retro, and Tox during the Hyperhollow period, was not as fortunate. Like the rest of Pandora, it was torn asunder by the same mysterious forces and the floating islands themselves finally lost their struggle with gravity and plummeted into the surface of Dragonhollow with terrifying kinetic force.
The box vanished, its terrible purpose fulfilled.
On 5E:322, Eris took pity on her people and accepted that they had finally suffered enough and learned to appreciate her role in their lives. She raised a fist and forcibly moved the entirety of Sanctuary through the heavens, leaving shattered Pandora behind for a new home on the opposite side of the planet.
With their arrival above Hallowmere, the Sixth Era was ushered in.
Speculation[]
Competing theories were often shared regarding the nature and origins of Pandora's Box.
Some believed that the box was buried deep within the bedrock of Dragonhollow and only discovered when the comet Eschaton broke in two and caused massive impact craters at Murica and Clay Canyon. However, the Archpriest HyperSilence investigated both locations after the fragments hit and never recalled seeing anything that resembled the box's description. This would also imply that Eris or her agents found the box by chance, which the Priesthood strongly rejected because they believed she was omniscient.
The official explanation of the Priesthood was that the box was an artifact created by Eris herself containing arcane energy manufactured for the purpose of scouring the lands of wicked unbelievers and sinners.
The Cult of Benly claimed that the box was originally created as a prison by the Pantheon to hold Eris herself. After they defeated her in order to bring order to the chaos of her native Discordia, the deities debated what to do with the captive goddess of discord. Ymir called upon his artistic daughter Neith to design an inescapable dungeon to house Eris, where she would remain for countless millennia. However, in exchange for being promised the mighty souls of his fellow gods, the lord of the underworld Grim would eventually free her from her box and help her take revenge on her captors in the Wyvern Wars. Eris eventually repurposed the box for her own needs, perhaps enjoying the irony. Obviously, the Priesthood considered these claims blasphemous and anyone who uttered them was branded a godless heretic, subject to the direst of consequences.
There is little evidence to support any of these theories and they should be treated as such until proven otherwise.
Behind the Scenes[]
The following is out-of-universe information about the real world Dragonhollow.
Pandora's Box is a reference to Greek mythology, where a box was given to Pandora by Zeus with a warning never to open it. She did so anyway, releasing all of the evils contained inside out into the world.
In Dragonhollow, the Pandora's Box mythos was invented by Tox. In reality, Acey handed out TNT to players so that they could blow up anything they wanted in preparation for the coming map reset, as she had done for previous maps.
The "box" in question was actually a creation of Acey's that dated back to 2013, perhaps an early section of the Redstone Labs. The screenshot, labeled "Acey's temple", was taken by Jack Firebane.